Birds of Prey | Page 7

muttered "George!" pushed aside
his desk, and took up his stand upon the hearthrug, ready to receive the
expected visitor.
There was the sound of a man's voice below,--very like Philip
Sheldon's own voice; then a quick firm tread on the stairs; and then the
door was opened, and a man, who himself was very like Philip Sheldon,
came into the room. This was the dentist's brother George, two years
his junior. The likeness between the two men was in no way
marvellous, but it was nevertheless very obvious. You could scarcely
have mistaken one man for the other, but you could hardly have failed
to perceive that the two men were brothers. They resembled each other
more closely in form than in face. They were of the same height--both
tall and strongly built. Both had black eyes with a hard brightness in
them, black whiskers, black hair, sinewy hands with prominent
knuckles, square finger-tops, and bony wrists. Each man seemed the
personification of savage health and vigour, smoothed and shapened in
accordance with the prejudices of civilised life. Looking at these two
men for the first time, you might approve or disapprove their
appearance; they might impress you favourably or unfavourably; but
you could scarcely fail to be reminded vaguely of strong, bright-eyed,
savage creatures, beautiful and graceful after their kind, but dangerous
and fatal to man.
The brothers greeted each other with a friendly nod. They were a great
deal too practical to indulge in any sentimental display of fraternal
affection. They liked each other very well, and were useful to each
other, and took their pleasure together on those rare occasions when
they were weak enough to waste time upon unprofitable pleasure; but
neither of them would have comprehended the possibility of anything
beyond this.
"Well, old fellow," said George, "I'm glad you're back again. You're
looking rather seedy, though. I suppose you knocked about a good deal
down there?"

"I had a night or two of it with Halliday and the old set. He's going it
rather fast."
"Humph!" muttered Mr. Sheldon the younger; "it's a pity he doesn't go
it a little faster, and go off the hooks altogether, so that you might
marry Georgy."
"How do I know that Georgy would have me, if he did leave her a
widow?" asked Philip dubiously.
"O, she'd have you fast enough. She used to be very sweet upon you
before she married Tom; and even if she has forgotten all that, she'd
have you if you asked her. She'd be afraid to say no. She was always
more or less afraid of you, you know, Phil."
"I don't know about that. She was a nice little thing enough; but she
knew how to drop a poor sweetheart and take up with a rich one, in
spite of her simplicity."
"O, that was the old parties' doing. Georgy would have jumped into a
cauldron of boiling oil if her mother and father had told her she must do
it. Don't you remember when we were children together how afraid she
used to be of spoiling her frocks? I don't believe she married Tom
Halliday of her own free will, any more than she stood in the corner of
her own free will after she'd torn her frock, as I've seen her stand
twenty times. She stood in the corner because they told her she must;
and she married Tom for the same reason, and I don't suppose she's
been particularly happy with him."
"Well, that's her look-out," answered Philip gloomily; "I know I want a
rich wife badly enough. Things are about as bad with me as they can
be."
"I suppose they are rather piscatorial. The elderly dowagers don't come
up to time, eh? Very few orders for the complete set at ten-pound-ten?"
"I took about seventy pounds last year," said the dentist, "and my
expenses are something like five pounds a week. I've been making up

the deficiency out of the money I got for the Barlingford business,
thinking I should be able to stand out and make a connection; but the
connection gets more disconnected every year. I suppose people came
to me at first for the novelty of the thing, for I had a sprinkling of
decent patients for the first twelve months or so. But now I might as
well throw my money into the gutter as spend it on circulars or
advertisements."
"And a young woman with twenty thousand pounds and something
amiss with her jaw hasn't turned up yet!"
"No, nor an old woman either. I wouldn't stick at the age, if the money
was all right," answered Mr. Sheldon bitterly.
The younger brother shrugged his shoulders and plunged his hands into
his trousers-pockets with a gesture of seriocomic despair. He was